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Banksia Woodland Restoration

The Threatened Flora Seed Centre (TFSC) in Western Australia is currently assembling this year’s winter seed consignment for the Swan Region’s Banksia Woodland Restoration project run by the Department of Parks and Wildlife. The TFSC has been working with the project for the past 2 years to improve restoration success by integrating seed science with restoration practice. Commercially collected seeds are assessed for viability and germinability prior to preparing consignments for direct seeding. Restoration practitioners can then be assured that seed should germinate given appropriate conditions.

For this year’s consignment of 142 collections representing 54 species (a total of 27kg of seed), more than a third of the species required some form of pre-treatment.

The preparation of seeds may involve pre-treating with smoke to improve germination success (e.g. Stirlingia, Calytrix, Amphipogon), breaking physical dormancy using hot water treatment (e.g. hard seeded species like Acacia), or applying heat shock to stimulate germination in physiologically dormant species (e.g. Anigozanthos). In addition, high-value seed collections are germinated for the nursery so that they can be grown on for later planting as tube stock (e.g. Banksia).